Just finished the first week of my NIACE AOL course delivered in Moodle – it’s been quite a steep learning curve! I had already had some experience of using Moodle during my SL course with the Consultants-e earlier in the year but this is a lot more full on! Lots of reading and activities to complete as well as holding down a FT job!

I have been particularly intrigued by Gilly Salmon’s 5 Stage Model on e-moderating and can see myself in the stages as a learner as well as some of the other participants on this course.

A few thoughts:

reluctance/shyness in participating in online forums/messaging – how much does this depend on previous online learning experience, or confidence in the subject matter?

do participants worry how they will be judged by other participants on their insightful posts in forums or is it just that the amount of reading we have to wade through puts people off??

Is this interaction (or reluctance to) similar to students learning English (or other subjects) who are scared of making a mistake in front of the class? Allegedly language sts who just have a go and aren’t scared of making mistakes are the ones who make the most progress – can/does the same apply to online learning?

Been a bit quiet on this blog – teaching and stuff – but am about to start a new online course so will try and keep up to date!

I’m looking forward to it…it’s run by NIACE and will hopefully enable me to better understand what it is to create an online course and also think about what it’s like to be an online participant. The new DTE(E)LLS course that I’m involved in is slowly getting there in terms of online delivery but we have a long way to go!

The students are all keeping blogs and I’m uploading links/resources through the College Student Portal but the discussion/forum side of things (among other things!) is lacking. As ever, time is the big restraint for both tutors and tutees – most have got full timetables and I’d worry that not enough would be able to take part in regular online discussions to make them worthwhile.

We still have a way to go in terms of shifting learning online – there is a lot of material to get through and lots of assignments to be written so I’m particularly interested in how some of the course’s GLH can be delivered online. Hope that the NIACE course which runs from Nov – Feb will give me a few ideas!

Just finished my Second Life online course – had 4 synchronous sessions in world in the evenings and a variety of tasks to do thro Moodle as follow-ups or pre session practice. Overall it’s been great! A very steep learning curve but I’ve learnt so much and have made some new friends in SL!

We communicated via headsets and mics which was essential in being able to follow what was going on. Though some members of the course had difficulty in communicating, generally I found it to be fine – amazingly clear and with v little reverb.

Ou tutor was immensely patient and knowledgeable – he had quite a challenge I think in keeping everyone up to speed.

Just received the blurb through about the online course ‘Second Life: An Introduction for Educators’ that I’m starting on June 1st with the consultants-e. Looks good! As well as having a chance to do something constructive in 2nd life (rather than just flying round crashing into things and not really knowing what else to do!) the course is running in Moodle so i’ll get an idea of what that’s like as a student.

After some of my students were filmed today making a YouTube vidblog talking about their podcasts, I was about to email them the link and then thought that it would be far easier for them to watch it thro my general teaching tumblelog. If we can encourage those teachers who I’ve worked with on tumblr to start posting resources they use in class on their tumblelogs then students will have a readily accessible bank of resources to dip into at any time. In theory that is what the EHWLC Learning Portal hopes to replicate but the steps to do so are still rather time consuming – tumblr, I think, is ideal for this kind of application.